His lady leaned over to me and ran her hand over Emile’s somewhat frayed blue favour. ‘This belongs to your lady?’ she asked. She was the first woman to ask about it.
‘Yes,’ I said, or something equally short. I was not at my best; a pinnacle of knightly fame, and I was reduced to monosyllables. Especially in Latin.
She glowed with satisfaction. ‘You love her?’ she asked.
I grinned. ‘Always,’ I said.
‘But she is not anyone here?’ Kunka asked.
I shook my head. ‘No. She is very far away. She is from Savoy.’
‘Like those gentlemen who cannot take their eyes off you?’ my Bohemian gentleman asked. ‘They are all Savoyards. From Geneva.’
Well, I was dull-witted, but not so very dull-witted as that. ‘Yes, she is from Savoy. But not, I think, with any of those gentlemen.’
Kunka put a warm hand on mine. ‘And your lady … will you be faithful to her tonight? With every girl at court ready to throw herself in your lap?’
I was looking for something courtly to say, but her eyes smouldered.
‘Listen, Englishman. I am the very Queen of Love of this tourney, and I challenge you as you are a knight to remember your lady.’ So the smoulder was not lust, but anger.
I bowed at the table. ‘Lady, you are so wholly in the right that I can only swear on my honour to abide your challenge.’
She smiled, and her knight smiled.
Later in the evening, when my sword was still undrawn, and I was surrounded – indeed, I was cornered as thoroughly as a stag of fourteen tines is backed into a cliff by hounds and hunters; there I was, alone, with fifteen women about me. Their bodies were young and beautiful, their eyes open and shining. Their hair was uncovered, delicious to smell. Nerio had stood by my side all too briefly, engaged one fair maid in conversation and taken her hand, leading her away to discuss poetry, or so he claimed. Fiore was nowhere to be seen. My Savoyards were not even in the same hall, and I suspect I’d forgotten them.
Kunka appeared at my side, and all the ladies bowed – she was, after all, the Queen of Love for the tourney. Her husband unfolded a stool and she sat.
‘Come, Sir William!’ she said, and her smile was as wanton as any of the girls about me. ‘Choose one of my handmaids to sit closest to you.’
I bowed. I was right willing to choose, and chose a young woman with jet-black hair and lips so red I wanted to see if they had paint on them. I didn’t think they did. She blushed to her hair and into her gown, but she sat by me.
Kunka smiled. The wantonness was gone, replaced by a harder edge, and I thought that perhaps she was also a mother; she knew how to give orders as well as take them.
‘Now, Sir William, welcome to the Court of Love.’ Kunka laughed, and squeezed her husband’s hand.
All the maids sighed. There were some poisonous looks for my raven-tressed choice. ‘Before we dance, Sir William will amuse us by telling us of his Lady. He loves a lady par amour, and wears her favour on his shoulder.’
The maids looked abashed. I confess I was abashed myself, so soon had I forgotten her challenge and my promise.
I thought of Emile, and in truth – oh, this cuts me like a Turk’s sword – I had trouble recalling her face. So many years. I could see her arrogant husband well enough in my mind’s eye, but her face swam in a haze of associations.
But Kunka had every right to ask, as Queen of Love. And she was setting me a penance as well as recognising me as the knight who had won the prize, and I was being challenged. Chivalry is more than hitting men with a sword. Chivalry is there in every dealing with a woman, from the bath girl to the Queen of Love.